


Coruscant is Cold

by DopamineLover



Series: The Tatooine Padawan at Temple [1]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherly Love, Cold, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Planet Coruscant (Star Wars), Platonic Cuddling, Tatooine Culture (Star Wars), Tatooine Folklore (Star Wars), Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28122747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DopamineLover/pseuds/DopamineLover
Summary: It was only his third real day in the Temple and Anakin thinks he’s going to freeze to death. He’s never been this cold before in his life. Tatooine is known for being hot. Twin suns will do that. But Coruscant may as well be Hoth, if that’s as cold as it’s rumored. The solution? Try and steal blankets from Obi-Wan, if he can get past a jedi.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: The Tatooine Padawan at Temple [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061420
Comments: 2
Kudos: 281





	Coruscant is Cold

It was only his third real day in the Temple and Anakin thinks he’s going to freeze to death. He’s never been this cold before in his life. Tatooine is known for being hot. Twin suns will do that. But Coruscant may as well be Hoth, if that’s as cold as it’s rumored. He’s tried a lot of things already: multiple blankets, layers on layers of robes, drinking Obi-Wan’s really bad tasting teas. Nothing is working. So, for the third night, Anakin’s decided that not sleeping because of the cold is ridiculous. Another night of no sleep and maybe the jedi masters will finally snap when he fails a test and reveal themselves to be just like _depur._

So tonight’s plan was simple: steal more blankets or a few robes from Obi-Wan’s room. That’s easy. Anakin’s been stealing things from other shops on Tatooine for as long as he can remember. Odd parts, nuts and bolts, small things that easily fit in his hands and pockets. Which is much different than large blankets. Not to mention the additional challenge of stealing from a Force-User. Tatooine didn’t have anyone like that besides him. But he could’ve sworn Kitster’s _depur_ had eyes on the back of his head and always knew where Anakin was.

Step one: pretend to go to bed like normal. The past two nights Obi-Wan made him go to bed at nine, just like Mom used to make him. So, at nine tonight, the plan is to try and go to sleep. If he falls asleep, perfect. No need to steal from Obi-Wan.

But an hour had past and another, which then became three hours of Anakin just staring at his ceiling, shivering into his mattress. So, step two has to be initiated: quietly sneak out of the bedroom. Easy. The lights were turned off in the shared space where the couch and kitchenette were located; that means Obi-Wan went to bed. Then, step three will be to quietly sneak into Obi-Wan’s room, find a spare blanket or two, and sneak back out without waking his master.

Pushing the already three blankets off of him, Anakin quietly rolls off his mattress. The few squeaks of the springs are faint enough that Anakin could’ve just rolled over in his sleep. Perfect. Alright then, next task is the door. Anakin uses the Force (as Qui-Gon told him it’s called) to find Obi-Wan. He looks for the Light of Life as Grandmother called it, and finds his teacher in his own room. Perfect. His plan is going alright so far. He reaches up and turns the cold metal of the door knob ever so quietly and then tiptoes into their shared space just to the next door over to Obi-Wan’s room.

Taking a deep breath, Anakin steels his nerves. It’s just like when he tried to steal bacta patches for Mom. Or when he stole medicine for Kitster’s little sister. Well, hopefully this ends better than both of those disasters. They were probably bad examples, but he can do this. He just needs to remember to be quiet. Anakin place his hand on the doorknob and turns it as slowly as possible, slower than he opened his own door. He opens is the slightest crack so he can slip in before closing it so so so slowly again.

“Anakin?”

Anakin nearly jumps out of his skin, years as a slave keeping him quiet, but his jump in the air can’t be missed. His eyes are blown wide, and his body is fully alert, ready to run, or fight, and hopefully avoid punishment. A slave can be killed or worse for stealing.

But it’s just Obi-Wan.

Oh no.

It’s _Obi-Wan_.

He’s awake, laying on his bed, propped up against his headboard so that he can read his holopad. He’s under his own blankets, and clearly not expecting his padawan to sneak into his room. And for all his years of experience, Anakin can do nothing but stand there, caught red-handed.

“What are you doing here, padawan?” He places his holopad down next to him. Oh no, don’t get up, don’t get up, don’t get up. Anakin has nothing he can say. Silence is a slave’s salvation. So silence he chooses.

“Did you have a nightmare? Can’t sleep?” Anakin knows when he’s given an out. So he nods, lowering his head and taking the excuse. After all, yeah he can’t sleep. And the cold itself is a living nightmare.

“Hmm. Or perhaps it’s the cold keeping you up,” his master muses. Anakin whips his head up from the floor, eyes wide in shock once again.

“How did you –”. A chuckle cuts him off. His master is smiling, even in the dark and having his room infiltrated by his student.

“You are quite loud in the Force, Padawan. I think tomorrow we should begin teaching you how to shield,” he smiles further at the suggestion. Damn, he knew it. You can never fool a jedi. Hopefully he’ll be like that when he learns everything from Obi-Wan. “Come here, Anakin,” he beckons him forward. If it were anyone but Obi-Wan, Anakin would’ve been out the door in a heartbeat. But the benefit to his lack of shielding is that he can sometimes feel Obi-Wan’s thoughts and emotions in his own head through what his master called a training bond. And right now, Obi-Wan seems nothing but amused. Amused is good. Amused usually doesn’t lead to beatings or lashes.

So Anakin walks forward to the bed and climbs on when Obi-Wan lifts the corner of the blanket. As soon as he sticks his legs in under the blanket, he feels his toes start to defrost. It’s not as warm as Tatooine under the noon day suns, but it feels like when he and Kitster would sit together by the bonfire during feast days and celebrations and warm their hands by the fire and their feet in the leftover warmth held in the sand. Not that the nights ever got cold like the days on Coruscant.

Anakin does the next logical thing: shimmy down into the blanket as he lifts it simultaneously up to his eyes. Even his nose was cold. He's just trying to soak in as much warmth as he possibly can into his bones. This earns him a light laugh from Obi-Wan.

“Feeling better?” he teases. But Anakin is so thankful that he nods and smiles back sincerely.

“You’re like Leia to the bed,” Anakin giggled back.

“What?”

“You’re heating it up,” Anakin explains, seeing his master’s confused look.

“Who’s Leia?” Oh. Anakin forgot that Obi-Wan won’t know the stories. Secrecy is what the slaves survive on. Oh, his mom would be so upset that he let that slip. Stories are for family, as are most of the slave secrets. But, then again, isn’t Obi-Wan his family now? Can’t he tell him at least this?

“She’s one of the suns. Her brother, Lukka follows her during the day, trying to catch her as she races across the sky. Mom says they’re playing tag, but Grandmother says Leia is the daughter of The Desert. That she’s running with Lukka to find _depur_ —uh, the slavers – in order to free her siblings. But she always misses them. They only shine at night, bound to the black, but finally free by the Desert.” Anakin smiles. He misses hearing what Grandmother would say to all the kids some nights. The stories she made them promise to remember and promise to keep secret. He misses how Mom would tell her versions, the ones great-great-great ancestor Skywalker would tell once she walked out of the Desert, having found her clan’s name.

“That was a beautiful story, Anakin. Thank you for sharing it with me.” If Obi-Wan weren’t a jedi, Anakin would say that he looked sad, and yet truly grateful. That perhaps if there were better lighting, he would say Obi-Wan’s eyes were watering. Maybe Obi-Wan forgot that Anakin was a child of the Desert too, sometimes. Mom said that slavery made a lot of people sad, just not the Hutts and other slavers.

“But you can’t tell anyone!” he warns quickly, pulling his arm out from the warmth next to him to reach his master’s shoulder. “The stories are only for family! Promise you won’t tell?” And Anakin was relieved by the sincerity that took over his master’s face.

“I promise,” he breathes, placing his own hand over the one Anakin has pressed on his shoulder.

“Good,” Anakin lays his head back down on the mattress, happy with that answer. And maybe it was because he just made a new family member, or it was the promise of secrecy that was so important to all the slaves, but Anakin feels bold enough to reach up with both arms to give Obi-Wan a hug. “Thank you, Obi-Wan,” he mutters back against his brother’s chest. He can feel the warmth radiating off him, can feel his body start to pull him into sleep for the first time since arriving on Coruscant. “You’re really warm,” he whispers before he is completely gone to sleep. He feels his pillow bellow him move as Obi-Wan chuckles.

“Go to sleep, Anakin.” And so he finally does just that.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of the culture is based off of other works on this site. And probably not accurate to that either. So I've made up a lot and used words like depur (=master) that I've found while reading.
> 
> Enjoy!


End file.
